Countries refusing to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases should face trade sanctions, according to a British independent think-tank.The idea is a non-flyer of course. It's a recipe for trans-Atlantic trade war. Any such sanctions would result in massive retaliatory tariffs being imposed on European goods entering the US market. Not that such an outcome would worry NEF and friends, it’s the kind of destabilizing event they pray for.
The United States has not signed the Kyoto agreement on climate change and Russia has indicated it may follow.
The New Economics Foundation wants the EU to tax imports from these countries because they enjoy a competitive disadvantage as energy costs increase.
For example, here’s an extract from an interview Sir Crispin Tickell gave to the BBC’s David Frost in August 2000.
CRISPIN TICKELL Well, I'm afraid that the only way of, there are two ways of persuading the Americans. One is that they have some nice right catastrophe that is, as evidence of the floods were in this country last, the last few days, or, perhaps better still, is that the rest of the world takes measures to protect their interests. Supposing for example, that Europe and Japan and the other emitters all have carbon taxes, or some kind of tax on the amount of carbon that they emit, then they might have to have a kind of tax on American imports, which would as it were redress the balance. And that would be very unwelcome to the United States because it would mean a tax on their exports when they went to other industrial countries.In the past, I’ve had the misfortune to work with NEF on a number of regeneration projects. As I remember it, their only contribution was the provision of theoretical models that took no account of local conditions and offered no real solutions. So, this latest suggestion is about par for the course.
DAVID FROST But that would be a trade war then, wouldn't it?
CRISPIN TICKELL Well it would partly be a trade war but I'm not going to take too seriously the World Trade Organisation because it's record on environmental matters is uniformly bad, but nevertheless, that is the kind of measure that you might envisage if the Americans are alone among the industrial countries in not obliging by doing these things.
On a personal note, I'll point out that they were insufferably smug about the “rightness” of their approach even when it failed to deliver.
